Author Archives: Eric

The Kid Who Made No Money

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I took the family to see a movie. There are lots of movies coming out – and a lot of really good stuff to see. We went to see “The Kid Who Would Be King”. Yes, it’s a retelling of the Arthurian legend BUT it was new, it had at least one amazing actor and had enough of a budget to have really good special effects.

Guess what?

It bombed at the box office. It makes me more than a little sad to think that once again, just like Mortal Engines a movie that was not tied to a massive franchise, wasn’t a sequel and wasn’t a direct remake of something we’ve seen in our time dismally failed at the box office. I still hear people complain about movies and the lack of enjoyable new stuff that Hollyweird produces and yet once again there was a complete failure to show movie types that’s what anyone actually wants (by going to see a good film!).

IF you have a kiddo around the 10 – 14 year old range OR you just love movies aimed right at that age group you should definitely check this film out. It was a fun retelling of the King Arthur legend and had the bonus of giving some total ‘gross out’ information that turns out to be quite real (Merlin’s diet info is REAL)!

On Fandom

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This was originally published in Watch The Skies for the January 2019 issue.

Fandom is a wide ranging place. There are folks from across the spectrum of humanity and all around the globe… or at least that’s how it’s supposed to be. Somehow that’s not how it’s working out.

There have been a number of actresses that have recently departed from social media after being harassed to the point that they felt interacting with fans was not worth the effort anymore, or worse it was actively dangerous to them. An actress, long out as gay, was the target of huge amounts of harassment for being picked to play a gay character. Let that sink in for a moment.

A gay actor is not right to play the part of a gay character. Cue Rage Spew and foulness from the dim glow of a screen in a basement.

It almost sounds like this is something new. Social media has been around for more than a decade now, but it has become ubiquitous. Say Facebook and everyone knows what you mean (and likely has an opinion on it). There are other platforms and many methods to be more connected to the people that help to create the things we all know an love.

This harassment is not new and that is what makes it more shameful to me. I listened to an actor talk about how he almost killed himself because of how he was treated after the role he played was deemed unworthy of the franchise he was part of. This was twenty years ago. Yes, twenty (20). This young man thought that his life was done, was not worth moving forward with because of the extraordinary backlash to his role. People hated what he had been part of creating and it almost killed him.

Link Jar Jar

My opening statement means you. Yes you. Fandom is not yours. It is communal property and you do not have a right to harass, threaten, demean or otherwise be shitty to the people that create it. The people creating this art are more open and accessible than any other time in history, and people that can’t behave any better than a four year old that missed snacks and nap time are driving them away. This is NOT acceptable. As a fan I love being able to connect with the folks that make some of the most amazing things. The more people are terrible to these creators (actors are not alone here) the more the creators pull away and become less available to us. All of us.

Fans love to disagree and then expand those discussions over far and wide ranging topics. Arguing about the latest film, book, play or adaptation to whatever form is right down at the core of fandom. Fans should discuss things. Fans absolutely have every right to dislike any media they consume. Fans do not have the right to abuse the people that helped to create it. Fans don’t own the things they love, the can only love or hate them from a distance. Our biggest responsibility as a community is to act with the future in mind. We must create a sense that all are welcome. More than welcoming, we must create an atmosphere and place where the children who see our actions will come to love and understand the same things. The best and only thing we can hope for is that our children see examples of the wonderful creations in fandom and the fantastic people involved and choose to continue making amazing things far into the future. We must show others how to have a good time so that good time will continue.

Fandom is not yours. It belongs to the future. Make that future the best it can be.

Failbook

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Facebook has become a known and common method of communicating with friends, family, associates and all manner of folks. It is a beast. It is huge… and it will do as it pleases.

Social media in general has come under fire for being a terrible thing that allows people to do and say rotten things to each other. It has become a storm of political hyperbole and equally outlandish backlash. I have grown to hate it. I joined Failbook almost a decade ago. It’s stunning to put it that way. Ten years of “like this post” and everything that goes with it, but now I am reconsidering.

The platform itself has privacy and security issues. To paraphrase some younger folks I know, “DUH!”. A socially connected computer program that reaches millions of people is going to have issues. That many people can’t be mixed together and have everything come out perfect. Just can’t happen. The biggest solution to that is I don’t put things out there that I don’t want others to know or that aren’t already public knowledge. I don’t connect it to my bank information or anything that I can’t drop or replace (yes, that includes my phone – it would be a pain in the ass, but I could do it).

It doesn’t connect my website posts automatically anymore. I will admit this is annoying. I prefer to work here when I can and link this site over. It used to be an automated thing, and now it doesn’t work. I have a series of developer messages that would require some amount of research and picking and pecking here on the site to get the connection to work again. I am not a web developer. I am not a programmer. I maintain this site on my own with my bare minimum amount of knowledge. Bluntly I don’t want to spend my time on a web site. Every bit of time I spend working on a web site problem or looking up programming connections or whatever other nonsense doesn’t work now is just more time away from the work I want to be doing. I don’t want to be a programmer, just an author.

Even if I could get it to work, there’s a fair chance nobody would see it anyway. The Failbook folks have decided that your small business links shouldn’t be seen in everyone’s feed… just the big companies that they work with. The site itself is worse than any needy significant other you have ever had. Constant messages about new posts, new friend suggestions, things YOU’VE MISSED! OH MY GOD WHY ARE YOU NOT ON THERE LOOKING AT THIS THING RIGHT NOW!?! They will do anything in a desperate attempt to capture your attention. They want you to scroll and click and like and all the other crap they’ve got going on. It has become intensely annoying. I have complained about it, out loud, frequently. This prompted my wife to yell at me, “Quit bitching! That’s how they make money. You react, you check, you click and they get paid. If you don’t like it, get off there and shut up about it!”

She’s not wrong. The purest distillation from that is a single fact. What you put up there IS NOT YOURS. I’m sure there’s a volume of legal mumbo-jumbo somewhere that declares what words are yours to use or not use and how they can collect it and catalog it and… whatever. It’s all bullshit and it’s not yours. They hold all the keys. They want to change something, they will. They want to deny you access, they will. You get the point. That is why I go through the trouble to maintain this site. It is mine (to the extent that any web based service is truly possessed). If I want to turn the whole thing purple I can. I will post as I please, when I please and all six of my readers will still see my words (after they check their news aggregators because this isn’t cross posting any more). I like the simplicity of it. It’s not going to win any awards, but it is mine. All the changes, all the anger, frustration and screaming into the void over what Failbook should or shouldn’t do amount to nothing. In the end it hasn’t dramatically changed my true friendships. It’s nice to be able to connect, but then I was also on Myspace and Livejournal. We see how those turned out.

I’m planning on staying on Failbook for now, but I’m not jumping through the hoops to make posts from here connect. Their site really isn’t worth the effort.

The New Year

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Yes, It’s later than everyone else but I am finally acknowledging the new year. The end of 2018 was a busy time for me. It was a time for the holidays and family but also when I started to come back from a massive slump. 2018 was a miserable year for me creatively. I read next to nothing, I wrote next to nothing and I did a handful of art pieces that I don’t like much. Terrible. There were a lot of things to be thankful for over the year, but it was still a tough year. It’s easy to put a marker at the change of a calendar year and claim “new” but I had already started all that back before Christmas – now I just need to keep it rolling.

For anyone keeping track I haven’t changed my personal view on resolutions. Many years ago I made a New Year’s resolution to NEVER make a New Year’s resolution again. Guess what? Nailed it again. Still going strong on that one. IF you want or need change in your life, the calendar is convenient, but not required. Make the change to grow or get better when you make that choice. You can do it!

I’m going to apply some of that same enthusiasm to my own work. I’m still struggling along, but I’ll get there. So will you. Have a fantastic 2019 – I look forward to a lot of wonderful stuff.

Mortal Engines

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People have a lot to say about what the movie industry has to offer these days. Most of the time what I hear is, “Hollywood is out of new ideas…” in some form or variation. I will split semantics on this one. I am slowly coming to believe that they’re not out of ideas at all. They’ve got lots of ideas, just nobody with the guts to put something new out there. IF by some crazy chance somebody manages to push through an original and interesting idea that gets made into an actual feature film, the marketing team has no idea what to do with it. They attempt to cram it into a box and force it to fit some concept of ‘what will sell’ that may or may not actually have anything to do with the movie.

I believe that last bit is what happened to the film Mortal Engines. The movie is based on the book of the same title by Philip Reeve. I read the book back in 2009. That was actually before I started posting my book reviews here but those old words are still hanging around on Goodreads. I was excited to see this film in theaters. It’s new. It’s not a sequel. It’s not a remake. It’s NEW!

When I saw the box office results I was very disappointed. For all the people out there that clamor constantly for something new and different this was a staggeringly poor turnout.

 “…second straight flop for Universal… following “Mortal Engines. That $100 million film debuted last weekend with $7.5 million film in ticket sales.”

That’s dismal. I’m not in the industry and even I see that as dismal. On paper this movie had everything going for it. One of may favorite directors was on board (I’m trying to look past the Hobbit fiasco). Great actors were involved. There’s action, there’s a revenge plot, there’s romance. The characters are diverse. There were so many good things…

I’m not sure why it hasn’t been more successful. The visuals and special effects were excellent. The acting was good. I enjoyed it. I will buy the DVD when it comes out. I think it’s a movie that is worth seeing – above and beyond the simple fact that something new needed to be supported so that the people funding films put more new things out. The only thing this will do is push the number crunchers back to Dukes of Hazard 3 Accessible Parking and that is just depressing.

I put this movie directly into the same category as Jon Carter of Mars. That movie should have been a big box office hit with multiple stories to follow up and the people selling it just couldn’t figure out how to get it to you. Mortal Engines is a good film and if you get the chance to catch it you should.

ROCK and ROLL!

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I love to get out and do things. Getting out and doing things is one part of what informs my writing. Just getting to go places and see things that are different from the normal, everyday pace.

Yesterday I got to go and see Rock Lititz studios and wander around a couple of very cool buildings. Yes, I kind of went all geeky on building stuff, but that’s what I do.

The neat thing about Rock Lititz (if you’re not into the music scene) is that it brings internationally known talent and business to what amounts to the middle of a field in Pennsylvania. We drove past a half dozen farms before we saw this shining, modern, crazy cool place.

I don’t work with anything related to the audio field, but even I was excited by the time we were done there and was ready to work on an audio project. VERY cool stuff.

This is the check in desk at the hotel. Those are all speakers with a color changing LED light set behind it:

Not at all what you’d expect to see on the edges of Amish country. This is the outside of the hotel and restaurant:

Some of the coolest stuff was inside. I don’t have a ton of pictures because I was busy wandering and looking on with wonder. For classic rock fans out there – these are set pieces from THE WALL!

Pink Floyd tour props!

As I have stated many times before, get out there and do stuff – there is way too much amazing to sit on the couch! IF you can, go and do these things with passionate people. Those who are most passionate about what they do can make for some of the best conversations and most interesting tours.

Sharp Eyes and the End of the World

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One of the panels I was on at Philcon was titled “A Creative Apocalypse” and the description was, “What creative and original – but scientifically plausible – ways are left for storytellers to destroy the world?”

I kind of struggled with this question initially. Creative I can handle, it’s the scientifically plausible that I was worried about. Part of me really wanted to separate out destruction of all human life from actual destruction of the planet, but that line of discussion didn’t get far. Not much of a story without the people (still horribly narcissistic if you ask me).

Then I seemed to recall something about massive ant colonies that spanned across vast distances. I didn’t have a chance to do any research on it, but it was in the back of my mind that I had seen this so I presented it (when I could) at the panel. I find a plague of bugs to be a less than ideal concept for the end of the world (YUCK!).

I took a moment to see if I could find the information I remembered and found this fun little piece about floating colonies of fire ants in Texas.

Smacking into one of those would certainly ruin your day, but it wasn’t what I remembered. Hunting a little more brought me to the mega-colony. Yes, it was a huge colony and it actually reaches far further than I seemed to recall. Crossing continents. Almost all of them, and they don’t’ seem to fight each other. This could be very bad news for people should these bugs ever band together.

A sharp-eyed friend of mine then pointed me to a whole different point of view. What if all the bugs GO AWAY?

Turns out we need them. We need as many variations and weird combinations as we can keep. We need to learn as much as we can to preserve ourselves. The bug-pocalypse could just be that we don’t have any. A distressing thought indeed. Now to turn that into a world ending story…

Philcon 2018 – A Review

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This was previously published in Watch The Skies (November 2018)

I was once again happy to be a participant at the convention put on by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society this year. I was given a number of different panels to be part of and as a bonus got to talk a couple of folks who had never been to Philcon along for the ride. Having friends along was a difference maker this year. It helped me to see the con with fresh eyes. It’s very easy after years of participation to become jaded and treat an event like this as work.

Attendance this year felt like it was slightly more. I have absolutely no basis for this observation other than feeling. I could (and likely am) totally wrong, but part of why I might have felt this way could be that I saw other con tracks that I don’t normally see. I paid more attention to the Anime track. There was more than one costuming related panel and there were even events for kids. I know the Anime track has been solid for years, but having somebody along with me who was interested in it gave it a fresh look.

My panels were well attended – except for one. Everyone who does panels at cons will eventually get a clunker. Having a friend walk to the panel room with me was the only reason I wasn’t there alone. Eventually the person that suggested the panel be on programming arrived. We had a nice chat and then she left early (can’t compete with the masquerade after all).

There were also a number of artists displaying their work in the art show. I recognized many of them and their work, but there were also one or two that I hadn’t seen before. I hadn’t been familiar with the artwork of Gary Lippincott, but I have realized my mistake after looking at his amazing water color work in person. Do yourselves a favor and go check out his work.

As always it was wonderful to see various members of my ‘convention’ family that I don’t get to spend enough time with. Jokes about alien abductions just don’t play as well anywhere else as they do there.

It was a fun filled and fast weekend. I was on the way home almost before I realized it. I hope to be invited back again next year. IF I go, I want to bring more friends. That, after all, is how we’re going to keep the things we love rolling along.

The Solution?

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Maybe… just maybe a vacation was the answer.

It’s something that a lot of folks have said is a very American thing, feeling guilty for taking time off. I suspect they’re right.

I’ve been ‘on vacation’ now for a little over a week. Not a proper holiday – haven’t gone anyplace. Stayed at home. Got some things taken care of around the house. Had some time with friends with no schedule pressure. Went to a convention (there will be a report on that coming up too!) and generally enjoyed Thanksgiving.

Also in there I attended a book signing event. One of my stories is in the book Squeekie Celebrates 20 Years of the Cupboard Maker Books! I was very excited to hear that I made the cut and got my story in as a fan favorite. You should go and check out Squeekie’s page HERE. It was fun to sit with other authors and sign books for folks that were kind enough to buy them.

I sat back down here at the machine and started working again. I wrote, edited and fired off a story submission then went back and found an old story that I thought was really good. I took that story, edited it with a new eye, formatted it and fired that one off to another market.

I’ve picked up a book and plunged right through the first chapter.

I think I might just be back on track. We’ll see if this all survives heading back to work and diving into the holidays. Here’s hoping!

Slump

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I thought initially to title this “The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Slump…” but I thought I might get into trouble with that one.

This year has been terrible for my creative process. I haven’t written, I haven’t read, I have barely pulled together any art.

I don’t know why. It’s frustrating.

I want to write. I want to create my art. I want to read awesome books. I just don’t seem to be able to pull together the motivation to actually DO any of it.

I look back at a quote from one of my favorite authors, “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage.”

I think a meeting with a muse could really help right about now.